Arm of Kannon 6
Posted: December 1, 2009 Filed under: Arm of Kannon Leave a comment »Masakazu Yamaguchi – Tokyopop – 2004 – 9 volumes
This was by far the worst volume of the series so far, which isn’t as big a problem as it sounds, but still… bad for Arm of Kannon is pretty terrible.
The problem is mostly that the story has not picked itself up yet after concluding in volume 4, and everything that’s going on with these new characters and settings is confusing. I don’t know that the reincarnation aspect I mentioned last review was quite right, and it doesn’t seem very likely as of the end of this volume, but things could still turn that way.
The only common link so far is the Garama Corporation and the existence of the immortal Manma mutants. The arm is called something else in this story (the Angel Fist), and the plot involves combining it with the Holy Grail, and there are Christian symbols to go along with it this time, though the Buddhist treatment when it was the Arm of Kannon was far more thorough. There is a pair of guardians who get a terrible explanation and backstory, and I’m not at all clear what it is that they’re doing in the Garama Corporation headquarters since… it seems like they weren’t originally in possession of the Angel Fist? Or maybe they were, and the head of the Garama Corporation stole it? I don’t know.
We see oblique references to the first storyline when the head of the Garama Corporation mentions the lost Arm of Kannon and we see the faces of the Manma that Mao beat down in the forest, but aside from that, everything is new. There are some battles, but they don’t compare to the ones in the other volumes, and are much worse due to the fact that I had a hard time following what the Brightring brothers were doing and what was even going on. They fight with relics, Shadow (a Priest) with a gigantic sword that can cut souls, and Rou with a chain that he is dying to take off.
Mostly it was just the story exposition that made this a train wreck, and that’s unfortunate. We also didn’t get to see much of the arm at work, nor of the interesting Magician character that seemed to be the reincarnation of Mao, so maybe things will pick back up next time when those factors come into play.
